1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus that has a display device having a relatively large display screen and can display various types of images, such as a digital still camera or the like for example, and to a method and program used with the device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital still cameras which record photographed images on a recording medium as digital data are widely used. Recently, the miniaturization and increased capacity of internal flash memory and removable memory used with digital still cameras have been advanced, and a large amount of image data can be accumulated in the memory.
With a digital still camera, a user may find that a great number of photographed images accumulate over the years as data in internal flash memory or removable memory, and the number is too great for the user to manage in his/her mind.
With such a digital still camera, a large amount of image data photographed and obtained as one bunch (folder), based on predetermined information such as date and time, is managed. For example, a large number of image data photographed on the same photographing day in one folder, such as a collection of image data photographed on Jan. 1, 2008, and so forth, is managed. Also, a folder with a name that the user inputs, such as “Athletic event” and “Birthday party”, is created and the image data thus photographed and obtained is bunched.
Thus, a folder identified by date and time, or a folder name that the user inputs and so forth can, can be managed by bunching the image data that is photographed and obtained at a predetermined event. Still, the number of such folders will also accumulate over the years, till where the number thereof is too great for the user to manage in his/her mind.
While there are cases where a user would desire to perform a search for the image data of a particular image, on the other hand, users will want to browse through images in the order in which they were photographed, or browse through all of the images photographed at a certain event.
An multi-functional information processing device such as a personal computer or the like, has a wide variety of tools to handle image data, wherein various types of rearranging of folders can be readily performed, and also the amount of images that can be displayed at one time is great, whereby image searches can be flexibly performed.
However, an image processing apparatus such as a digital still camera has a display device such as a liquid crystal display, but the size of the display screen thereof is smaller than a personal computer, and the processing capability is also inferior. Therefore, with an image display apparatus such as a digital still camera, for example, a menu display or index screen of images is used for each folder, such as that disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-037182 and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2006-295236, for the user to browse images.
That is to say, in order to view a series of image data of a particular event that is a target from a large number of folders, first, the particular image folder is searched for while going back and forth over the large number of folders, and images of the image data in the found folder have to be confirmed one at a time.